Ever heard of “Geocaching”? Maybe you’re a cool kid and you have, but until a couple of days ago I’d never heard of this life-changing, adrenaline-fueled adventurous adventure. Then, one fateful day, I heard about it on the radio and my entire world changed. Everything I ever thought I knew about the universe was wrong.
So, what the eff is Geocaching? To save me explaining, I’m going to directly pull the definition from Wikipedia, which has the added benefit of making me sound well-researched and academic and all that exciting stuff. My friend Wiki says:
Geocaching is an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use a GPS receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, anywhere in the world.
Ok, if you’re thinking that sounds sexier than two ducks kissing, that’s because it is. It’s basically an adult’s-version of a treasure hunt, on an international scale. There are over 1.7 million of these little hidden treasures (caches) worldwide. There’s hundreds in every major city and quite a few in most country towns. There are a handful in Antarctica (zoom out a bit) and even one on the International Space Station. Holy crap. I literally just wet my pants.
The idea is you use your GPS (or mobile phone, or even a map), combined with the given clues, photographs and cryptic puzzles to find a cache. You sign the log book it contains, take one of the treasures and leave something of your own behind. I like leaving 20 cent coins because I’m awesome.
That’s all the writing I can be bothered doing, so I’m going to shove some pictures in your face now. Enjoy!
This was the first cache we found! It was simple, just like me. Still, no matter how easy it was, you never forget your first cache. Ahh, good times. *sighs*
Look at the pure joy on this young man’s face (handsome little fella isn’t he?) This was the second geocache we found. Was quite a sneaky little bugger, took us two attempts and a total of about an hour of looking. We even had to bring in a friend to improve our chances of finding it. It was right in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD, and we had to be careful not to let anybody see us finding it. People who don’t know what geocaching is (most of the world) tend to steal a cache if they see you uncover it. Bastards. The geocaching word for these people is “muggles” (yup, out of Harry Potter).
A couple of shots to give you an idea of what some of the cache tins look like. Some are absolutely tiny, others are big buckets and some are even gallon drums!
Can you see the cache? It’s hidden in plain sight..
This little bugger of a cache was way out on the end of a jetty. I had to shimmy across a wet and slippery wooden beam, taking care not to fall and die. The second picture shows where it was hidden (click to enlarge).
This has nothing to do with anything. But god damn, those are awesome pants.
Want to have a crack at this Geocaching thing yourself?
This is a nice video to get you up and running (There’s quite a few handy videos on that page)
Full Geocaching.com Guide
This concludes my review of Geocaching. I can only rate it 2.5/10.
Just kidding, 10/10. Awesome.
UPDATE:
I’ve had a question from a friend who was having a bit of trouble finding her first cache. Truth be told my first cache finding didn’t go so well either. I ended up 100m from where the cache actually was! So here’s how I would go about finding a cache…
If you’re using a GPS receiver it’s just a matter of logging on to geocaching.com, grabbing the coordinates and plugging them into your GPS. If you’re using a phone, there’s a few apps that will help you. iPhone users, have a look here. If you’re on Android like me, I’ve tried about 20 apps and c:geo seems to be the best by far (it’s free). I’ll assume you’re using c:geo for Android, but if you’re using something else the instructions should be similar.
Boot up c:geo, and you’ll see it has a map function that can list all the caches in the area, and when you click on one you can view all it’s details and even navigate to it with the built-in compass. The phone will tell you that the GPS/compass is accurate to within 10 metres but in my experience it’s been accurate to within about 5 metres or even less (though when you get to the cache, sometimes you have to wait about a minute for the location to “lock on” perfectly, especially if you’ve been walking fast to get there.)
So once you’re where you think the cache is, the idea is that you can use hints or the cache description to figure out what you’re supposed to be looking for. Sometimes even the title of the cache can help you along (I did one called “Have a Seat” and the cache was hidden under a park bench). If, after doing some poking around you still can’t find it, you can have a look at the “Logbook” part in the app (or on geocaching.com) to see what other people have posted after finding (or not finding) the cache. Try to find it yourself first though, as the logbook section almost always gives it away. Some people post photos giving away the location, others will pretty much give it away by saying something like “I had to climb the tree to reach it.”
Finally, if you still can’t find it and are sure you’re not doing anything wrong, it’s worth checking the in-app logbook section to see if other people have had trouble finding it. Sometimes it may have gone missing (people steal them) and in rare occasions (has only happened to me once) the coordinates may be wrong and somebody’s posted the correct coordinates.
If anybody’s still having trouble, feel free to post in the comments below!